Podcasting To Personalize Feedback

Ever wondered if all that time you spent making corrections and writing suggestions on a paper was ever “heard” by your students? Or why you spent that time when you had to explain what you meant in person during or after class? Here’s a way to improve listening AND save time. [EF]

Interested in finding a more effective way to provide students feedback about their writing, ELA teacher Sarah Brown Wessling records feedback and delivers it to students via a podcast. She begins by marking important points on a student’s paper and then shares her thoughts with students through a recording, which she finds more useful and effective than written feedback. Providing feedback in this way is more personal and allows her to respond writer to writer, reader to reader, instead of as a teacher to student. Students are also more apt to listen to the podcast than to read lengthy written comments on their paper.